


mortal things

by Lvslie



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: s02e09 The Satan Pit, The Hug (trademark): Extended Version, accidental confessions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-01-17 09:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12362397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lvslie/pseuds/Lvslie
Summary: ‘How stupid is that?’ she whispers. ‘I mean—if I stayed, thinking you were there, and you’d save the ship, thinking I—’‘I wouldn’t,’ he says and Rose’s heart stutters in her ribcage.





	mortal things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goingtothetardis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goingtothetardis/gifts).



> A/N: I haven’t written in-canon ten x rose in such a long while, I feel a little (more than a little) rusty, but i tried to capture them as faithfully as i could. For Heidi, whose prompt this was: a beautiful opportunity because this is something i have always low key wanted to write: the immediate and inevitably emotional aftermath of the Satan Pit. From Rose’s perspective, for a change, because I tend to write too much from the Doctor’s. I hope you'll enjoy this <3
> 
> (P.S. As usually, I fixed some mistakes/clumsy wording instances after publishing, because I'm hopeless. But it's ... sorta better now?)

She’s warm and cold at the same time; little shivers down her spine and ribs, a dizzying flush on the skin. Her eyelids are heavy, some dull ache coils low in her belly. Rose is tense, and she’s drowsy with weariness. She feels like something is about to give way any moment now; either she’ll fall into a hibernating, dawdling sleep, yielding into the numbness—or burst into something cold and sharp, eviscerating even so. 

She takes a shaky breath and asks, ‘What’s going to happen now?’

Her head is a little dizzy, and it shows in the way her vowels spill over the consonants, muting them. She sounds young and meek, a childish cockney lilt more prominent than ever, and she’s too tired to be even embarrassed. ‘With the … with the black hole. What’s going to happen with it, won’t it tempt somebody else? Is there even a way of …’

She trails off, suddenly unsure of what she’d meant to say. Is there a way of escape? That’s a loaded question, and not quite as straightforward as she’s meant it to be. Can you escape something that pulls you in regardless of circumstances? Or if you can, how many times before—

The Doctor is doing something with the console. Rose is not quite sure what, nor does she really care—and she has the faint impression that he’s not entirely aware of the aim or purpose of it either. His head is tipped forward, hair scattering shadows onto the pointy angles of his face, and he seems tense. He’s not wearing the spacesuit anymore, armoured in his jacket and tie instead: stiff and distant while standing an arm’s length from her. 

Rose swallows. She has a fleeting thought that if she touched him, _right now_ , reached out and _touched_ him—he’d jump up, leap away, startled. Like it would hurt. 

And if there’s anything at all that can testify whether she’s not fabricating, it’s the fact that he doesn’t answer. And he’s not preoccupied, not _really_ : his hands are idle and confused as they brush and touch past the console, his breathing is just a little more strained and quick than usually. She doesn’t want to think about how she knows him so well she can notice that. Right now, all she can focus on is a different thought: _he’s at a verge of something._

She’s not sure if either of them knows how to deal with that, if it really comes to dealing.

She blurts out, ‘They told me you were dead, you know.’

And it’s not what she’s meant to say at all. She’s meant to throw in something inconsequential and clumsy, and make him feel better with the knowledge that she’s human and forgetful, that she can saunter away and sleep through the struggle of after-thinking to wake up naïve again. And maybe he’d be able to forgive himself once more, or perhaps just fool himself for a moment longer, and he wouldn’t have these shadows under his suddenly old alien eyes in the morning, and he wouldn’t look like he’s about to break in two. Maybe. 

He tenses up. His head moves, just slightly, upwards—he’s now facing the coldly incandescent rotor, hands splayed evenly on the console, utterly still. _He looks_ , Rose thinks helplessly, _like a tragically convincing hologram._ Which is not exactly a foreign concept, not _remotely_ so, and she almost shudders. 

He says, ‘I’m not.’

And if it’s meant to be flippant, it’s not, either. It’s listless and hollow instead, and more than anything—tired. He sounds like there isn’t very much left, inside him, to suffice for producing a coherent sound.

Rose hugs her arms to herself: there’s, again, this odd feeling of suspension between being bodily and not at all. She doesn’t know how to call it: being acutely aware of the scratch of her jacket on her skin, and the dry chemical scent of burning that lingers in her tussled hair. Her hands are sore from something, and she doesn’t quite remember what.

And at the same time, she doesn’t feel any of this. Not at all. _It doesn’t matter_.

‘So I told them I’ll stay,’ she says, and her voice snaps midway through the las vowel, dissipating into something breathless. ‘I _wanted_ to stay.’

There’s no answer, unless she counts the swift and wan impression that he exhales. She adds, ‘Just in case.’

He doesn’t ask, _how are you alive, then?_ Or maybe that’s the wrong question. It might just be, _how did you change your mind? How quickly did you betray me?_

Or maybe he _knows_ already, that she never did, and he doesn’t want to be affirmed. She thinks she can see his fingertips pressing into the console, as though he’s holding himself up. She wants to know if they’re cold. She closes her eyes for a very— _very_ —brief moment, and imagines walking up to him, bringing one of those hands to her lips and kissing it. Would that not say it all? Would that not be easier?

 _Not really_ , she thinks. _Not in this particular reality._

‘They drugged me with something, and … and that’s the only reason I didn’t. They took me away _by force_ ,’ she says, and then chokes out an unexpected laugh. An airy, startled sound, almost like a cough, and almost painful. She’s shivering now, noticeably. If she wasn’t so tense, her teeth would clatter.

Not that he’s looking at her.

‘How stupid is that?’ she whispers. ‘I mean—if I stayed, thinking you were there, and you’d save the ship, thinking I—’ 

‘I _wouldn’t_ ,’ he says and Rose’s heart stutters in her ribcage.

He turns to look at her, and suddenly it’s almost too much. She almost wants him to look away.

Alright, so her eyes are wet and her lips are trembling and fuck it, she’s barely holding it together, _alright._  But how _dare_ he look like that as well? How dare he look like he’s the same, like there would be _no difference_ in the way it would hurt, no matter the one hurting. Like there’s no difference between the mortal thing and the thing that lives forever.

Like it’s possible: this pale precious face, gaunt in the sharp light, and large ancient vulnerable eyes; like it could be just as much _all that he is_ , as _she_ is everything she’d ever be right now. He has no right to look this way. She almost says it, _no right_. _Not you. Not ever._  

He says, ‘I wouldn’t save them.’ 

‘No?’ Rose whispers. ‘Really? You’d let them die? You’d hear that I’m not there and you’d just let them die, _just like that_? I—’ 

She smiles. The muscles of her face almost hurt with it, but it’s unavoidable. ‘Sorry, but I don’t believe that. Not a bit.’

Something in his face changes then, and becomes awfully, unthinkably desperate. He looks like something trapped, coaxed into an unbearable situation and ready to hiss and bite, bite at _itself,_ to get out.

He grits out, ‘I _would_. I would leave them. I would do it, and then maybe we would both die anyway. How about that? We both die. We have, somewhere, in some other timeline. We’re _dead_ , Rose.’

When she doesn’t reply, he adds, brusquely, ‘And that would still be more bearable than—’

He doesn’t finish, jaw tightening. His eyes are wet, and slightly red, and there is no mistaking that for weariness anymore. ‘Imagine for a moment that I’m not a good person, Rose. That I’m selfish and greedy and very, very angry. Very, very resentful. And then tell me, tell me if you had to _imagine_ at all.’

She draws in a breath. ‘I don’t want to. I don’t—’

She’s not crying, she’s not even shivering anymore, she just wants to _stop thinking_ about this awful futility, this awful sense of helplessness. ‘—need to. I don’t _care_.’

And Rose is not quite sure how she walks up to him, or when exactly does she do it, but she’s standing face to face with him now. And his arms are already sneaking up around her: an involuntary reflex, an instinctive and dizzyingly fervent response. He doesn’t feel as steady as usually: heavy and strained and almost brittle. She doesn’t know which of them is supporting the other, or whether they’re not bringing each other down. His body crushes into her, warm and solid, and his hands are as cold on her back as she’s thought they would be, _cold_ and unsteady. He breathes out against her neck, warm air and something a little moist, and she doesn’t want to know if that really means he’s crying.

‘This is what you were talking about, though, isn’t it?’ she asks, into his neck and suit, her fingers brushing through the damp hair and stroking up his back, ‘I’ll wither and die. I get it now, you know? I’m dying already, I _have_ died, in some version of this. I’m already gone somewhere, and it’s all just prolonging the inevitable—’

And suddenly she can’t speak anymore without it all turning into some incoherent and pathetic sob, so she only exhales shakily and clutches at him. She doesn’t say, _and I don’t want it to be like that. Do something with it. Change it._  

‘No,’ the Doctor says hoarsely. ‘No.’

‘Why do we try, then?’ Rose demands, helplessly. ‘Why say that it has lied, when it might as well have been telling the truth, _died in battle_ , how’s that any less probable or bearable than anything else—’

‘ _No_.’

‘No? Then tell me why,’ she manages to choke out, eyes blurry and chest hurting, ‘does it feel like that.’

He doesn’t answer, doesn’t even move all that much, only presses his hands into her back and closes his eyes against her skin. His eyelashes tickle her skin.

And after a moment, he says, in a very quiet voice, ‘I’ve been trying to tell myself I’m doing it for you. That it’s the noble thing. But it’s—it’s because I couldn’t live with it. I wouldn’t be able to bear it. All this—you know, don’t you? I told Ida that you know already. You know. All of it, every worst thing I’ve said and done and asked of you, it’s because I couldn’t bear it. _I can’t bear it_ , Rose. I’m sorry.’ 

He’s almost incoherent, almost inaudible, and she thinks she _does_. In some odd and twisted way, even with all that is unfair in how it’s not spelled out and she still has to guess, she _does_. She knows.

Feeling overwhelmed, she splutters, ‘I’m sorry, too. If I could, y’know.’ She takes a shaky breath. ‘If I could not die, I wouldn’t. _Really_.’ 

There’s a pause.

And then it happens: he _laughs_.

An entirely unplanned and unavoidable, deliciously inappropriate chuckle straight into her skin, warm and damp. She feels a rush of warmth return to her, almost dizzying as she laughs as well, at _this_ , at the absurd of it.   

Trying to disentangle herself from him, she leans slightly away, and he’s looking at her with such _stupidly_ loving eyes that she needs a distraction, anything at all, before she does something unforgivable, like kiss him.

So she tugs at the zipper of her jacket and tries to writhe out of it, muttering, ‘M’all itchy. And sort of dazed, I mean, that was _such_ a stupid thing to say. I think there was something in the air, honestly. I—’

She doesn’t get to finish because he tugs her back to himself, one arm free of the jacket, the other still awkwardly tucked in, and leans into her with a low and growly sound. 

He mutters, ‘I’m stupid, though, you know? I am.’

Rose grins, lips somewhere in the short wisps of hair and he must feel it, because he nuzzles the juncture of her neck and shoulder even more, pressing up into her. ‘Is this the point where I’m s’posed to disagree?’ she says. ‘Because I’m not— _ouch_. Unfair.’

He’s poking her in the ribs. ‘I do stupid things,’ he continues, in a low voice, and completely disregarding her interjection. ‘Not because I don’t know that I shouldn’t.’

‘No, because you know _everything_ ,’ Rose says and she can feel him smiling now, as well, somewhere into her skin. ‘Doctor Knows, that’s you. That’s your real name. That’s—’

 _Stupid_ , she thinks. And then she thinks, _I don’t care._

‘I know I shouldn’t do all that,’ the Doctor says faintly. ‘And you know it. And _look_ at us.’

‘Yeah?’ Rose muses, closing her eyes. Everything around her seems to _be_ the Doctor, and she can smell his slightly smoke-drenched suit and sweaty hair. 

And he’s taking off her jacket now, without ever leaning away, pushing it down her right arm so that it pools on the floor, and pulling her more snugly against him: heated skin against fabric, but he’s becoming warmer already. It’s soaking him through, her brief human warmth, and he’s drawn to it like there _is_ some stronger force in the game.

She tries not to think of it in the normal categories: that he’s technically undressing her, and that it’s sort of new and sort of dizzying—usually he’s throwing something _onto_ her, sometimes his coat, sometimes her jacket, and not coaxing her out of it. She half-knows it won’t really lead to anything, _not in this reality_ , but it’s almost better that way, with that never-fading anticipation. That never-fading possibility.

Maybe it’s meant to be like that, half-human, half-not-at-all.

And maybe, just _maybe_ , one day something will push either of them over the line before this or that black hole pulls the other one away. Maybe the point should be that they don’t really care if it’s easy or not. 

He whispers into her hair, ‘Look how it’s already too late.’ 


End file.
